Champions league finance

This week sees the first matchdays of the group stage of the Champions League. Many feel that the imbalance evident in some of the games means that the competition doesn’t really start till after Christmas when the knock out games are played among the last 16 (the top two clubs in each of the eight groups). When you see results such as Barcelona 5, Royal Antwerp 0 it’s rather difficult to argue with that, and even more so when if you go through each group to identify which teams are most likely to move on to the last 16. It has become “a little tired, predictable and increasingly lacking in excitement” as Michael Cox wrote in The Athletic (28/09/23)

Predictable outcomes – that’s the way the money goes ….

Why is there this degree of predictability? Indeed, what is predictable? From a previous post by the Swiss Ramble we know that there are 7 clubs which have qualified for the Champions League (18/09/23 “Which is the best football club in Europe?), every year for the last 10 years. They are Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Manchester City, PSG and Real Madrid. Two Portuguese clubs – Benfica and Porto – have qualified 9 out 10 times, as have Dortmund.

One might ask what about the Premiership? The record for English clubs over the last 10 years – as well as Manchester City’s 10/10 – is Chelsea 8, Liverpool 7, Manchester United 6, Tottenham 5 and Arsenal 4. To a considerable degree this reflects the extreme competition in England to make the top 4. For instance, Arsenal used to qualify on a fairly regular basis, but not so much recently. Tottenham have tended to blow hot and cold, lacking consistency.

Comparative predictability

However, if we follow the argument that football is all about money, we might ask why they have not been more successful. For instance,
the so-called Big Six English clubs have received the lion’s share of UEFA TV money in the last 10 years, amounting to €3.3 bln or 93% of the English distribution. Manchester City earned no less than 826 million Euros, followed by Chelsea (647 million) and Liverpool (631 million), Manchester United (483million),Tottenham (398 million) and Arsenal (333 million). Even with a single appearance in the Champions League, Leicester City earned 123 million Euros. Winning the Europa Conference earned West Ham 53 million euros. Given those buckets of cash being paid by uefa to the leading English clubs, is their level of dominance too much of a surprise?

For comparison only Real Madrid surpassed Manchester City’s earnings, while Barcelona were 6th and Atletico Madrid 9th. In Germany, earnings were focused on two clubs – Bayern Munich and Dortmund – who earned 53% of German earnings between them. In Italy, Juventus (810 million) earned more than twice as much as the next team, Napoli (401 million). In France, PSG earned 43% of all French earnings from Europe (817 million), followed by Lyon (291million), Monaco (258 million) Marseilles (192 million) and Lille (126 million). In Portugal, Benfica and Porto earned 75% of European TV money paid there.

In short, UEFA preside over a prize system which strongly favours success, based on

Prize Money 30% of the total pot

Participation 25%

UEFA coefficient 30%

TV Pool 15%

So what’s wrong with predictability (or rewarding success)

 

It might well be asked “what’s wrong with that?”. What’s wrong, is that while bearing in mind that winners merit reward, if this goes too far then it puts in place a system where success breeds success. If very large sums of money go to the winners, who is most likely to be successful the following year. Moreover, there is an overhang from the past, as previous success improves a team’s coefficient, so increasing payments. As the Swiss Ramble points out, when Manchester City played Inter Milan in the Champions League final, a consequence of this system was th

In this context remember that 7 clubs have qualified for the Champions League every year for the last 10 years and 3 in 9 years of the last 10. How much does this trend reflect the money paid to them in the previous year? How far is UEFA responsible for the development of a small number of super clubs through the Champions League?

Domestic funds

But of course, football clubs do not live by Europe alone. There domestic tv deals, but once again the playing field is not always level. There is one domestic TV statistic that stsnds out from the rest – that if we rank clubs in the EPL by their domestic TV earnings, there are only two clubs elsewhere in Europe who would appear in that ranking – Real Madrid and Barcelona, and they are toward the bottom of the middle third of that table. With 147 and 146 million domestic tv earnings in 2022/23 they earn as much as Wolves and Brighton, but much less than Manchester City (181 million) and Liverpool (179 million). For more perspective, the team finishing bottom of the Premier League gets over £100m, which is more than every single club in Germany, Italy, France or Portugal – and all but three in Spain.

Thus, the effect of both payment systems is the same – reward success and increase inequality.

What this means for Newcastle (and others) bonny lad

A subsequent Swiss Ramble post (“Newcastle United hurt by UEFA’s revenue distribution” 20/09/23) concludes “, Newcastle United will benefit financially from qualifying for the Champions League, which will help the club meet its FFP targets among other things. That’s good news, but the prize will not be as much as it might have been, given the way that the UEFA coefficient effectively punishes “newbies”.” Clearly, from the above, so it does. But how much is this unexected, or even no more than “well this is how the system works”?

I sometimes think of UEFA as parent birds flying back to the nest with food for chicks (the biggest clubs) but it’s never enough. Every time they come back they are faced with however many open mouths demanding “feed me”. It would be naïve to expect these clubs to refuse more money – “no it’s ok, we’ve got enough”. But can there ever enough money to satisfy the demands of the biggest clubs? Or will they keep making demands till UEFA cannot or will not meet these demands. There has already been one, poorly planned and executed proposal for a full time European league in which the biggest clubs would expect to play, hoovering up as much money as they can, leaving only crumbs for UEFA and the lesser clubs (which will include some of the biggest names in Europan football).

The treatment of Newcastle – and the same could be said about any club qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in several years – is instructive and prompts the question – what is the purpose of the current distribution of reward system? Is it to reward success (even overly reward success)? Is it to restrain the top clubs from a European League run by the clubs in the same way as the Premier League is an FA run League? Or is it, so speak, to “repel boarders”? To handicap the arrivistes who want to disrupt the party the established clubs currently enjoy, in the hope of reducing such as Newcastle, in effect, to “one hit wonders”?

What’s the game?

We might also ask whether, or to what extent this is anti-competitive? For instance, leaving prize money to one side, why is it that Newcastle earn only 30 million euros from participating in Champions League, UEFA coefficient and TV pool, while Manchester #city will earn 66 million euros. The main reason is the coefficient (4.5 million compared to 33 million) though Manchester City’s TV pool earnings are forecast to be twice as large as Newcastle’s. Indeed, Newcastle will take less than any of the four English clubs .

As Swiss Ramble concludes, “The Geordies have basically been hammered for the crime of not playing in Europe for ages, so it does not really matter how good (or bad) the current team is, which means that Ashley’s legacy still lingers on”. But another way of looking at this is to recognise that the distribution will advantage the more established clubs and disadvantage the newcomer. Just an accident?

That said, we should recognise that when the new Champions League begins next season are moving toward a more equal system. Prize money and participation will increase from 55% of the total pot this season to 65%, most of this being the increase in prize money from 30% to 37.5%. This will be at the expense of the UEFA coefficient and tv pool, which will decline from 45% to 35%. So some more emphasis will be on success on being in the competition and winning, rather than the size of your national tv audience and success up to 10 years ago. But the transfer is only 10% of the pot, so a long way to go before what matters is winning matches and qualifying in the first place. What a team achieved up to 10 years will continue to overhang European competition, and while a move in the right direction it will not fundamentally challenge the dominance of the biggest clubs, who would, in any case, oppose any reforms that might do so.

Is this the game? Really?

We said at the beginning, the group stage of the Champions League is “a little tired, predictable and increasingly lacking in excitement”. Reforming to a Swiss system’, where all 36 competing sides will be in one division and sorted according to their results in —matches against eight separate opponents (four at home, four away) – ie one that will take time for fans to understand – seems unlikely to introduce too much change for the best teams will always be able to do it on the pitch and to win the competition and hoover up all the dosh.

Indeed with the coefficient and tv pool still in place (if somewhat less valuable) we can still end up with unusual outcomes that while Manchester City won the Champions League and trousered more money than anyone else, Inter – who having lost in the final, were arguably second – got less money out of this than such as Real Madrid (who lost in the semi-final) and Bayern Munich (losers in the last 8). Winning isn’t always less important than bums on seats and previous outcomes, but it can be. Can this be right?

Why a non-Old Firm title win is now a near impossible task

Interesting article on the BBC website by Nick McPheat – “Why a non-Old Firm title win is now a near impossible task” https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66359978).

It is very difficult to disagree with the conclusion particularly as the manager of the last non-OF club to be Scottish Champions was Sir Alex Ferguson. There are though, one or two things McPheat has not considered, but more than anything I have problems with his tendency to be accepting passively of the factors that lie behind this annual procession. Then again, it is the BBC!

Why? Well football is an unusual service product. There is no practical reason (other than I would hope the Competition Commission would have stepped in long before this point was reached) why we could not all just only shop in, for instance, Tesco, such that no one went to any other supermarket or shop. Football’s not like that. For a match two teams aren’t desirable, but essential, and Rangers, for instance, can only play Rangers B so often before the fans get bored and wander off. Indeed multi-club ownership by the uber wealthy and national investment funds is an issue in case pressure is applied where the same ownership is significant in both clubs.

And if football’s product (the game) is to be interesting for spectators at the time, but just as important beforehand (intending spectators), the two teams should be competitive with each other. This is an important reason why a game between Manchester City and PSG generates more revenue than Barcelona and Albion Rovers.

Indeed to run a league competition, something like 10 to 20 teams are needed, and to avoid the competition becoming stale and all too predictable, it is desirable that all these teams can compete with each other. For every club to be equally competitive with all the others might be an ideal, but it’s the benchmark we should be aiming for to keep the league interesting. Given that the OF have hoovered up every SPL title since Fergie pitched up at Old Trafford, it seems pretty clear Scottish football fails this test.

But back to McPheat, whose first factor is the financial gulf between the OF and their ‘competitors’. Quoting Kieran Maguire, McPheat tells us that

1.    “Celtic and Rangers make up 70% of the Premiership’s total revenue.

2.    Their wages account for 69% of the league’s total, while they amount to 96% for combined squad costs.

3.    In 2021-22, they made up 95% of transfer fees in the division.

Eye-watering numbers for sure – but what’s even more staggering is the changing fortunes over the past 38 years.

4.    In 1984-85, the last season a non-Old Firm team finished on top, Aberdeen generated £110 for every £100 Celtic managed. Now, the Pittodrie club bring in just £16 for every £100 made by Celtic.”

How or why has this happened? According to McGuire again, “That’s partly due to the expansion of stadiums and the sell-out crowds Celtic and Rangers attract. But the real mover is qualification for European competition. In the SPFL, there’s a ceiling for broadcast revenue. That’s not the case in Europe.”

The difficulty with the last reason is that in football – not just in Scotland – success begats success – or the success of qualifying for Europe makes you more money than the other clubs who don’t. This is money that the successful club can use to generate additional resources in the future. The obvious route for this would be to buy in ‘a better class of player’ and thus have a ‘better class of team’. This strategy of course is looked down on by many ‘real’ football fans, with criticism focusing on “it’s all about money”, “bunch of mercenaries”. This is usually heard from the fans of the teams that have been less successful, but the practical reality of football (and again, not only in Scotland) is that money doesn’t talk, it roars.

However a more long term view is to use the additional resources not to employ your very own of whoever passes for Galacticos, but to invest in coaching infrastructure. For instance better facilities. Aberdeen in Fergie’s day used to train on Aberdeen beach. Rangers now have Auchenhowie, while Celtic are at Lennoxtown. Or if not physical infrastructure then coaching infrastructure, by employing better qualified/ more able coaches, or training those coaches already employed to be more skilled. Through better facilities and /or better coaching the aim’s the same – to put a better and more competitive team on the park. The irony of course for the “it’s all about money” critics is that even this upskilling approach is “all about money”.

So perhaps the takeaway from this is that competition on the park is, at times, subsidiary to the competition for resources, to increasing revenue, to successfully having access to he pockets of the long suffering support.

All of this, however, glosses over some structural factors. One of these is that (leaving Hampden to one side) there are only four clubs in Scotland whose stadium capacities exceed 20,000 – Aberdeen (20,866), Hibs (20,421), Rangers (50,817) and Celtic (60,411). So the OF not only have the largest revenues, but the largest capacities to generate revenue. For instance Celtic Park has a capacity which is more than 9 times the capacity of New Victoria Park, Ross County’s home ground. Given geography and the distribution of population in Scotland this is probably no surprise, but Celtic Park is more than three times larger than Tynecastle and four times larger than Rugby Park.

Thus ceteris paribus, Celtic have the opportunity to generate a multiple of at least three times what other clubs have the capacity to achieve. Another structural reason for the gulf.

But of course ceteris are not always paribus. In 22/3 Celtic played to an average of 97% of their ground capacity, while Rangers played to 96.8% of their slightly smaller capacity. Aberdeen played to 74% capacity, while Hibs played to 85% and Hearts to 93% . So, at least 2 of the clubs we would expect to be competitive have attendances, not quite at the OF level, but certainly comparable. Aberdeen lag somewhat behind, but not so far as Kilmarnock’s 46%. Even the much more rural Ross County achieve 67%.

But the main point is that we cannot proceed straight from ground capacity, but how much of a surprise is it that the OF are more successful than anyone else at turning ground capacity into bums on seats.

Then there are the financial implications. Celtic’s average attendance last season was 58,828, and Rangers 49,232. Hearts average was 18,513 or 31% of Celtic’s average and 37% of Rangers’. The implications for generating revenue are as clear as they could be – not just bigger stadia, but they can put bums on their greater number of seats in those stadia.

What could address this, to offer a game that might not be equal but have more equal foundations? It was in 1980 that Scottish football ended sharing the gate money between the home and away team (50% each). This might not ensure financial equality, but, returning to my earlier point about the need for the teams to be competitive with each other, as well as the significance of revenue, reverting to gate sharing would at least be a nod in that direction.

Last season Ross County would generate 4,420 ticket sales in their home games. If in future seasons they would pay over 50% of this to the teams coming to play them in Dingwall, but bring back 50% of the gate from the larger stadia of bigger clubs, not least playing the OF away, that has to be a financial boost, making them to that extent more competitive than now.

There is though one more structural inequality – European competition, for if the OF have cornered the title, every season they will secure the riches of Croesus that the Champions League offers.

For ticket sales, “coefficient payment” (their success in previous years) and TV, Celtic could expect to bring in almost £20 million, even if they never win a point. But if they do they will receive £2.37million for a win and £790,000 for a draw. So for a modest win and 2 draws, they would make another almost £4 million pounds. Rangers could expect much the same as long as they can negotiate the qualifying rounds. And that of course is only to Christmas, there being further rewards for participating, and even losing, in the last 16 and beyond – over £8 million for losing in the round of the last 16. For winning the Champions League the Prize is £17 million.

For comparison, in the SPL the prize money for finishing first is £3.5 million, second place gets £3.25 million, third gets £2.5 million and fourth gets £2.25 million. All of these are dwarfed by payments from the Champions League. The prize for winning the Premier League is less than the payment to Celtic for winning one game and drawing two others in the Champions League. Therefore, the reality is that the reward for being Scottish Champions is less the title and more the access it offers to the wealth of the Champions League.

Of course, there are second, and third prizes, called the Europa League and Europa Conference League. Total prize money for these is a total of just over £400 million and just over £200 million respectively. BUT the total prize money for the Champions League is almost one and three quarter BILLION pounds, or almost three times the total of the other two competitions!

However, given the reward level available to most Scottish clubs it must be fairly obvious that even the Conference offers financial advantage, even if is a fraction of what can be earned in the Champions League. The latter may be a highly significant distortion, but even the former offers some level of advantage.

However, while access to the Europa competitions has been shared around, the OF have monopolised access to the European competition where the real money is to be made.

Not everyone is convinced that it’s all about money, however. McPheat quotes Stephen Pressley that other things are important, including “stability, consistency of high-level coaching, really good recruitment, promotion of top academy players and overcoming the phycological barrier” as “vital” additional factors. Not too much to ask, is it?”

The problem is that with the exception of the last two cited factors, the others are all about money. Lack of money means better players, as well as top Academy players will have to be sold or cannot be retained at the end of their contracts; high-level coaching is costly; good recruitment means having the resources to attract players from other teams.

Only the “psychological barrier”, and to some extent promotion of top Academy players are not entirely about money, but rather about managerial policy. How many managers would prefer to sign an experienced player rather than persevere with a younger player, even if the latter is (or clearly will be) a better player? “The class of ’92” at Manchester United is a cautionary tale for those who think you “never win anything with kids”. However, it takes commitment and determination to see something like this through, as young players by definition lack experience and thus make mistakes a more experienced player might not have made. That said, Fergie was bringing through such as David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers.

However, while managerial policy is critical – would the “class of 92” have been recognised if Alan Hansen had been manager – money remains important. It’s unlikely that another club would be able to come and take very few young players Ferguson wanted to keep, but at another less well resourced club would he have been able to hang on to these players.

Or how likely is it that his Cup Winners Cup winning side would have come to fruition before it was cannibalised by bigger clubs? The changes to contract would only have made this worse as players (rightly) are able to leave for another club when their current contrat comes to its end.

Jude Bellingham for instance first played for Birmingham City, aged 8. By 15 he was playing for their Under 23s, and in the first team aged 19 (2019/20). By the end of that season, it was obvious he would be leaving, and for a reported fee of £25 million, he left to join Borussia Dortmund, whom he left to join Real Madrid for a reported £88 million (with the possibility of that rising to £115 million with contingency payments), still aged 20. Thus in a period of four years Bellingham has gone from playing for a perennial English Championship side, via the Bundesliga to Real Madrid, perhaps the wealthiest team on the planet, involving transfer payments of £113 million!

If a reasonably well resourced team like Dortmund (almost always in Europe, and almost always in the later stages of the Champions League with the financial rewards that can be secured there, especially toward the later rounds) cannot hold on to a young player, what hope would a smaller club than Dortmund have?

So, to conclude, McPheat, considers “a non-Old Firm title win .. a near impossible task”. Given all the above – the contractual changes which makes it even more difficult for smaller, less well resourced clubs to hang on to their better players, the riches of participating in European competition (even the Conference) – it is perhaps surprising the gulf is not greater. In theory though (I know perfectly well, they wont) football could addess these matters – more equality of distribution of funding for European competition and not just for those partipating but for football at levels, as well as ensuring more appropriate competition which focuses more on what a player might achieve and not just compensation for training received to date. These things could be addressed – though they wont be, in fact the likelihood is that the uber elite will find ways to secure even more of football’s wealth, and pull up the ladder to minimise the likelihood that other clubs can compete with them.

What would be more difficult is physical infrastructure – that the biggest clubs have the biggest stadia and are best at filling them, with the revenue implications that has. Therefore, for different reason the inequalities that exist are unlikely to be addressed never mind resolved. Perhaps the way forward is to recognise that some clubs have broken away from the pack – Manchester City, Real Madrid, PSG etc. Other clubs have also done this, but less convincingly – for instance Ajax, and other leading clubs in the smaller, less well resourced leagues.

Given this balkanisation of elite and top-level football, the aim must be to structure policy so that every level of the game is able to maximise and achieve its own potential, rather than only (or overly) on the topmost level. Football, as we pointed out at the start is a collective product – a competition between two equally competitive teams, which are resourced to achieve this, but at all levels. The topmost level achieving this tells us nothing about the rest of the game, so a perspective of the necessary width isn’t desirable, but essential. b

On Rishi, Liz and the dark nights

Truss and Sunak

And here we have Rishi Sunak exposed as the Tory he is, shamelessly boasting that he had changed funding formulas to take money away from deprived areas to the more affluent – something that “needed to be undone”. https://twitter.com/NewStatesman/status/1555476253045673987

But perhaps the most shocking thing is, I think, that he refers to the privileged area he is obviously in, is when he says he is giving them the funding they “deserve”. What criteria does he use for making this assertion? Do they deserve it because they already have more than others? Sort of to those who have shall be given, by taking it away from those who have not?

For one thing this flies wholly in the face of what is left of the post-war consensus, and even the paternalist Conservatism of such as Harold McMillan and Rab Butler, and perhaps even Edward Heath and Willie Whitelaw. Perhaps it is naive of me even to mention those names, for their Conservative Party is not Sunak’s

Kirsty Strickland was asked the other day if she would prefer Sunak or Truss and replied that being asked that was rather like being asked if you wanted kicked in the knee or punched in the mouth. I suspect she was only conducting herself in a lady like manner, for there are other more colourful ways of saying the same thing. Or if all else fails, its like being asked if you want hung or shot.

One might say at this point that it’s as well that Sunak looks unlikely to win. Until that is you remember that he is likely to lose to West Primary School, Paisley’s most infamous former pupil, Liz Truss. Nearly as much has been written about her as about Sunak, for us to know that the future is likely to be no more bright with her as PM as it would be were it to be Sunak.

This after all is who said that she would ignore the First Minister of Scotland who was no more than an attention seeker. You can find this here

Enough time has been spent on ire that she would say this – even the young man “interviewing her” (well throwing her easy balls to hit actually) was moved to point out that the FM is only the elected head of the Scottish Government. There are, though, two points from this clip

The first one is to note not just what she said but the reaction – the cheers and the applause from the audience. All Tory Party members to a man and to a woman. If she decided to act against Scotland then I think its pretty clear that she would have the support of at least the Tory Party membership – indeed she would probably be cheered on and applauded as she did so.

Secondly, she considers that what is necessary is to show us what Westminster is “delivering for them”. And what might that be Liz? Actually, all she can come up with are “investment zones and freeports”. Nothing about energy costs going through the roof, inflation possibly reaching 13% by next year, increasing interest rates, all of which make real that it is “heat, eat or on the street”.

On the same video, if you let it run, you will find Rees Mugg making similar points in that public school ex cathedra way of his. Education and health are both doing badly (are you listening Professor), and that the entire referendum issue is just a deflection from their failure to deliver public services to the people of Scotland. No interruption, no calling out. Just sit and listen.

Ironically the Times reports on its front page that in England “Winter of woe means long waits for patients

Only six in ten will be seen within four hours. Bed shortages, an increase in demand, rising Covid infections and the prospect of resurgent flu mean that the NHS faces a fraught winter

As few as six patients in ten will be dealt with by hospital A&E departments within four hours this winter, ministers have been warned as concern grows that the NHS is heading for an “unprecedented” crisis.

Whitehall projections suggest that the health service in England is on track to miss the mandatory four-hour waiting time target by a record margin as it struggles with a shortage of beds and exceptional demand on services.”

In other words, its not just if this happens, but that they know that this will happen – that 40% will wait for at least four hours to be seen at A&E. What punishment would befall poor Yousaf if this happens in Scotland? Are you listening Prof????

In his National column yesterday, the Dug argued that this Tory Party election was taking a “dark turn”. Specifically he is arguing that “We may now be facing a Conservative government and party which being bereft of any compelling positive case for the Union and unable to make significant inroads into the electoral support for pro-independence parties is now toying with the idea of criminalising so-called “separatism”.

Sunak has after all suggested that if elected he would extend the definition of extremism to include those who “vilify Britain”, who “did not just want to attack the UK’s values but also the country’s very existence”.

It is arguable here that Sunak has in mind Islamic extremism, but it’s an easy argument to suggest that those seeking Scottish independence, or the reintegration of Northern Ireland into the rest of Ireland are attacking the very existence of the UK.

To draw all this together, the critical point is that both candidates seem set on a campaign to monster and vilify others. From our point of view, most notably the Scottish Government and its ability to run government affairs here, even if this means actually telling lies as Rees Mogg did in his clip. Arguing for your point of view is, according to Truss, “attention seeking”, but following the suggestions on amending current legislation could become something much worse. And let’s not forget repeal of the European Convention legislation and its replacement with a “British Bill of Rights”. We have already seen Truss’s view of the right to protest, the perpetrators in this case being described as “infiltrators”, which is an interesting choice of word if the Tory Party is set on “othering” anyone who disagrees with them, or even worse tries to obstruct them.

Scotland as Tesco – “pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap”

Last week figures were published by Eurostat suggesting that Scotland was better educated than anywhere else in Europe, measured by proportion of the population educated up to degree level for every year between 2011 and 2019.

However, even during my teaching career I became suspicious of the “maximise the number of graduates” policy.

There were several reasons for this.

1. when it all kicked off in the middle 80s, one important reason was to contribute to mopping up as much youth unemployment as possible – a more intellectual YOP perhaps? My first Prof – Peter Sloane, who eventually became Dean of Social Sciences at Aberdeen – used to tell me that if student:staff ratios got above 12:1 then HE as we knew it was done. While I am sure he himself presided over much worse than this even at Aberdeen, there is a limit, and at one point at what was then Paisley College in the late 80s, the ratio was 38:1 for Marketing (I wasn’t in Marketing, but it wasn’t much better in the areas I taught in). So, one cause was opportunism rather than a conversion to the notion of a well-educated population.

2. But, of course, there had to be a justification beyond “we don’t want all these young folks wandering the streets”, and Mummy and Daddy Middle Class weren’t going to have their wee Johnny or Jenny on YOP – and of course it was such as them Thatcher was looking to in order to keep her in power. The justification was in Michael Porter’s “The competitive advantage of nations”. Porter is (or was) the sort of consultant who didn’t demean himself working for large corporations – his game was working for governments. In this book, one of the things he argued was that having a high number of graduates was associated with a high level of economic performance – pointing inter alia to an early stage Silicon Valley. Ergo, have lots of graduates have a vibrant economy. Except this isn’t the only way to consider this issue.

Let’s accept that Porter’s statement is correct – that vibrant economies have lots of graduates – but did having a high number of graduates make the economy vibrant? OR – and call me cynical but this is my bet – a vibrant economy needs graduate level employees, so the kids see the openings and get themselves off to university. In short, having lots of graduates, of and by itself, won’t make the economy vibrant. It might be a necessary condition but it sure isn’t sufficient.

I remember a colleague getting into bother (and for the record, no it was NOT me) for writing a letter to the press, which included the “joke”, “what do you say to a new graduate?” “Big Mac and fries please”. If demand and growth in the economy is inadequate to make use of the number of graduates produced (hopefully in the right disciplines – do we produce enough Engineers and Scientists for instance – but that’s an argument for another day) then frankly the system we have in place is just a cruel hoax. Why for instance did we produce all these new teachers last year when there were 80 something full time jobs? Glasgow CC wasn’t even taking names for its supply list!

3. But of course that number of students wasn’t easily sustainable, which has justified the change to fees, in England at least, with kids paying anything up to 10k a year for three years. One curiosity is that government expenditure hasn’t changed that much. While fees are “paid” by students, other than for the very well-heeled they are paid by a loan, which is put up by the government – but, unlike University expenditure this is a loan to the student to be repaid by them, so doesn’t count toward deficit or debt. However, if it follows the experience of student loans, a good deal won’t ever be repaid, which is the final proof of my point 2 – following the optimistic version of the Porter thesis presumed that students would come out to the embrace of employers desperate to employ them and paying them for stable jobs. Aye right. Rather graduates came out to a much colder and difficult world than the one they have been sold. Some will do just fine. Many more will struggle, be laden with debt which they will struggle to repay (if they ever do). And of course, you gotta go to Uni – it’s good for school stats innit?

All of this drives me to the view that the number of people at university as the gold standard for all is wrong, inappropriate and in many cases just cruel.

When I started in HE my office was next to a guy who wrote learned articles on how an HE market would work more efficiently than the managed market we had at the time. That students “knew” what they wanted to do better than the Scottish Office which at that time set not just the number of places a University or Central Institution could take on in any year, but it also specified in which disciplines – so Economics, Sociology, Biology, Civil Engineering could all take on their specified numbers of students AND NO MORE.

The counter argument – and the policy we have now – is that students will respond to the vacancies they see and take University courses as appropriate. Uhm, yeh, sure. So now we have loads of students in Media Studies but not enough Engineers. The justification now is “personal responsibility” so when a young graduate ends up with no job, it’s their fault. It’s gas lighting on an industrial scale.

Moreover, do we have enough school leavers being trained at “technician level” – so folk like electricians, plumbers etc.? These are unlikely to make an economy vibrant – BUT you try running a vibrant economy without them. These are the people who actually do the work, and we have done two things. First, we have made clear that they should be aspiring to the next level up irrespective of their capacity to profit (whether in the sense of learning or reward). Secondly that their skills are valued less (well not until you have to employ a plumber/ heating engineer).

While having more graduates may make us the most educated in Europe, can we say that we are the most appropriately educated in Europe? Do we have too many graduates? Too many in the wrong subjects? Do we have enough technician grade graduates trained to a high enough level?

I don’t doubt the difficulty of this – there must be easier ways to get voted out than to tell the middle class that their kids might not go to University (which btw since it should be based on ability means the middle class will work as never before to hothouse their kids and put pressure on teachers to make sure they ‘attain their full potential’ – often defined by mum and dad!)

Likewise, this will not go down well in the Universities – cue cries of outrage among the Principals who have had years of pursuing their own megalomaniac projects and want to continue to do so. Being told that their student numbers are being cut to facilitate increases at technician level which would be something for the FE sector to get on with (though you never know with Universities – BSc Plumbing?) is not what they want to hear. Emphasising student choice is all very well, but the great majority of students are at university for one reason and one reason only – to get a job at the end of it all. This is something to remember when universities complain of cuts as philistinism – there is a lot of that in the universities as well!

Then we have to ask where we get the estimates for expected jobs in the future. Will the employers help? If you think I have been cynical so far, prepare for an even higher level. Too many employers have a time perspective which gets them to the end of the week, most weeks. How many doing job X will you all need in five years will be met by blank stares and comments about pointy heads. Will they be involved in training the students, giving them work experience for instance? My own encounters with employers convinces me that they expect a Business graduate to turn up the finished article – that he or she will know the kind of processes used, the financial control system used in that company. They’ve paid their taxes why do they need to do further training to address the gaps left by those bloody useless University lecturers. The idea that in a class of even just 50, there will be 50 graduates all going off to different companies, in different industries, doing things in different ways etc, is something their myopia prevents them from even being aware of, never mind understanding. Employers need to be much more realistic, but if they want graduates to have more appropriate skills then they need to become more collaborative

This is not the same as saying “more involved” because then they try to dictate and their ignorance becomes palpable. This is rather an old story, but my PhD supervisor one night at a dinner, found himself beside Hector Laing, then chairman of United Biscuits and Treasurer of the Tory Party – a darling of Margaret Thatcher. On learning what David did, old man Laing expressed his disappointment with the quality of young graduates. Rather then being apologetic (and because David is a bad b*****d) he asked Laing what skills they should have. After a bit of debate, it became apparent that Laing (who remember at the time is one of the captains of British industry) wanted them to be able to read and if they could count as well that would be an advantage. They haven’t got a b****y clue! They only – as they always do – want something to moan about, someone else to blame.

In short, the whole “number at University” strategy, and the annual row about the numbers and the attainment gap etc misses the point entirely. Certainly, being a graduate in any discipline teaches certain basic skills – creativity, research, looking for alternative answers, communication etc – but in that case does it matter what any graduate studies. Why not recruit Nurses (now a graduate profession) from the ranks of graduates in Ancient Hebrew? How many graduates are in jobs which actually use their skills? How many degrees are just cannon fodder for avaricious employers – for instance para-legals (BA in Law) who get taken on by law firms to do the donkey work for much less than if they had an LLB but the client gets charged as if they did.

There are two necessities for any future debate about training and education? First, we need honesty rather than political slogans, a commitment to the future of young people and not the future careers of middle-aged politicians (and in most cases, even older Principals). Secondly, while Higher Education should never be allowed to be only training, there needs to be awareness of employment destinations and that there is a need to profile to some extent post-school opportunities to the needs of getting a job.

The Canada Playbook

Just in case anyone doesn’t know, there have been two referenda on whether Quebec should leave Canada, becoming an independent state. These were in

  • 1980 when No won by 59.56 to 40.44%
  • 1993 when the outcome was even closer – 49.42 Yes to 50.58 No

    The history of this is a topic all by itself. What I want to explore here is how the Canadians reacted to their whisker thin success in 1993 and then subsequently some of their strategies during the referendum debate.

    The most important reaction post the 1993 referendum was the Clarity Act. Its key points are

  • Giving the Canadian Federal House of Commons the power to decide whether a proposed referendum question was considered clear before the public vote;
  • Specifically stating that any question not solely referring to secession was to be considered unclear;
  • Giving the House of Commons the power to determine whether or not a clear majority had expressed itself following any referendum vote, implying that some sort of supermajority is required for success;[13]
  • Stating that all provinces and the indigenous peoples were to be part of the negotiations;
  • Allowing the House of Commons to override a referendum decision if it felt the referendum violated any of the tenets of the Clarity Act;
  • The secession of a province of Canada would require an amendment to the Constitution of Canada.

    Two of these – 4 and 6 – are clearly not relevant to the situation Scotland finds itself in as part of the UK, but the others, to varying degrees and in various ways most certainly are

  • If this applied in the UK then in 2014 the form of the question posed then would have been a matter for David Cameron’s government. In fact, the form of the question proposed by the Scottish Government was changed by the Electoral Commission to little controversy. However, the Elections Bill going through the House of Commons at the moment will subject the Electoral Commission – supposedly the neutral referee in electoral disputes – to the power of whoever is in government, via a Strategy Paper to be delivered by the responsible minister (at the moment this is Michael Gove) that the Electoral Commission will be expected to follow.
  • This would mean that questions such as “Do you agree Scotland should be an independent country” (SNP original 2014 formulation) and “Should Scotland be an independent country?’ (Yes/No)” would be ruled out. Instead, something like the Scotland in Union question – “Should Scotland remain in the United Kingdom or leave the United Kingdom?’ (Remain/Leave)” and indeed this could be hardened up – “Should Scotland remain as part of the United Kingdom or secede from the United Kingdom?” could be what we face at the ballot.
  • Even once a Yes vote has been secured, it would be open to Westminster to determine whether or not the majority that had been achieved (let’s suppose we turned 2014 round so that it was 55% Yes) was a “clear majority”. It would be open to them to decide ex post facto that the majority should be 65%, or that 60% of the electorate should have voted as a minimum.
  • If any of a UK version of the Clarity Act had been broken, then the referendum could be set aside. This would be wholly at the discretion of the House of Commons.

    First question, would the UK pass this sort of legislation?

    In fact, early signs of the above are already visible, including the incessant demands for a majority to be greater than the normal 50%+1. Levels vary, but I impressionistically, I would say that a supermajority of around 65% is their preferred level – though of course if support was known to be at or near that level, no doubt it would be increased. When challenged on the justification for this, many of them will point to what a bad idea Brexit was and yet it got through by not much more than 50%+1. There are though a number of replies to this

  1. The vote was acted on with relatively little controversy
  2. This is the UK tradition with regard to determining political matters. The only referendum where it was not employed – or not on its own – was the 1979 referendum for a Scottish Assembly. If it is to be changed then should there not be some sort of justification. Why is it different for Scotland? When this question is posed, typically unionists run away or talk about something else. According to a University College London report (How could a vote on the unification of Ireland play out? | Northern Ireland | The Guardian) “It would breach the agreement [BGFA] to require a higher threshold than 50% + 1,” – just not in Scotland. They do though point to the need for consent which is clearly critical.

    Then there is the form of the question. It is claimed by unionists that the Electoral Commission don’t like questions with Yes/No answers, pointing to the use of Remain/Leave in the Brexit vote. However, the question proposed by the European Union Referendum Act was “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” Yes/No. The Commission’s view was that this “encouraged voters to consider one response more favourably than the other”. This could raise concerns about the legitimacy of the result of the referendum, and it was changed to the one used on the day. But to be clear, the issue was not Yes/No, but their concerns about the question as originally proposed.

    Clearly therefore preparatory work is being done on numbers 1 and 2 , while 3 and 5 aren’t relevant till after a successful referendum (though in these circumstances, would a referendum be seen as worthwhile?).

    But would Westminster actually do this? It seems clear that the laissez faire approach of David Cameron is unlikely to be forthcoming – though I suspect it was like this at the time as according to Blair McDougall, support for Yes at that time was about 28% so it would be a walk in the park. At the moment all the talk is of just saying No, there wont be a referendum, get on with the day job. However even the Tories must be clever enough to know that this wont work forever. A Clarity Act must then become attractive (if not sooner) and its not like they are not being encouraged down this road.

    In “The need for a UK Secession Clarity Act”, Jamie Blackett, “The Deputy Leader of the Alliance for Unity makes a case for clarity”. They require

  • Noting that independence supporting parties have never achieved 50% of the vote in General Elections (though ignoring that electing an MP isn’t the same as voting in a General Election), an electoral mandate has never been defined. Therefore once again we see Scottish exclusivity – Boris Johnson took the UK out of the EU on the basis of 45% of the vote giving him a majority of 80. Perhaps we should look for the mandate that Thatcher referred to – a majority of Scottish MPs?
  • That the electorate should include Scots living outwith Scotland, though no attempt is made, beyond referring to the author’s children, to define just what a “Scot” is
  • That the question should reflect the “seriousness” of the issue, that the previous question didn’t do this and should be replaced by “whether they wish to leave or remain in the United Kingdom” – ie the Scotland in Union formulation
  • there should be a clearly defined minimum requirements for the not just the threshold – historically low compared to similar referenda “around the world” (ie just not in the UK) – and the turnout, which sound rather like the 1978 Cunningham amendment
  • I will just quote this and leave it here “whether Scotland should be treated as one homogeneous entity – as it was at the time of the Union – or allowed to vote regionally. A second confirmatory vote would give Unionist Orkney, Shetland, Dumfries and Galloway and Borders and perhaps other areas, all of which are now actively discussing separation from Scotland, the opportunity to opt back into the United Kingdom”. However, it is worth knowing that the author does refer to those parts of Scotland which might be against independence being “dragged out of the Union against their will”, and that Scotland seldom gets the government it votes for because of the dominance of the Central Belt. Clearly irony is not one of Mr Blackett’s strongest qualities!
  • To make clear that Scotland would not be allowed out of the Union without committing to a share of the National Debt to be determined in advance – presumably by the House of Commons?
  • “Trading arrangements must be clearly laid down” before independence, and presumably before Scotland might or might not have applied to the EU for membership, which probably would change quite a lot.
  • There should be provision for when another referendum could be called if independence has not been supported in the last one.

Now it might be argued that this guy is something of an extremist, even in the Unionist camp (he seems to have little time for Ruth Davidson and Douglas Ross who he regards as not sound enough in defending their country) but I think he does set out many of the ideas the Unionist camp have been working on.

For me there are two take-home points for this. It is very unlikely that delivering a letter to the PM (whoever that might be) asking for a referendum is going to work. Either they will just carry on saying no, or they will dig out their copy of the Canada Playbook and work out how to make the process not just as difficult but as crooked as possible.

In that event, and this is the second point, we need to start working on ways to independence that perhaps don’t include a referendum (though perhaps some other form of democratic event as Joanna Cherry pointed out was necessary) if that simply is made impossible by our government at Westminster.

Uncle Tom drops a bomb

This morning Tom Gordon in the Herald performs his one trick pony trick of talking about the First Minister. I think he might be a bit annoyed, for he suggests that she is in danger of “making a fool of herself”, and that after all is Tom’s job. I might have written a letter about it, but I have had far too many letters critical of Uncle Tom hit the spike to be bothered, so I wrote this instead hoping that John would not take the same view as Drew Allan. You can find the article here

For goodness sake Tom, you spend most of your time trying to achieve that very outcome. I would have thought you would have welcomed a wee bit of help?

More seriously though, you suggest that her use of “within my power” is plaintiff. However, if she hadn’t added it, what are the odds that you and the rest of that fine body of men and women, committed to finding the truth of the matter (at least your own truth) would have begun to question whether the FM might consider going beyond the powers she has. I mean you guys must be positively salivating at that very possibility for what is she to do when Boris/Liz/ Michael/ Rishi say “Naw”? “First Minister set out illegal actions” – oh I can see it now!

And this is the point Tom. You discuss the position of BoJo, of his successor (whoever that might be), though to your credit you write off poor old Keir (a bit hard anything before three years before an election – maybe he will yet tear his shirt off to reveal he is Superman), but this is not only about London or the Westminster bubble. This is happening in Scotland (remember that nation?) That country? Maybe not, or maybe you don’t want to?). Do you not think that when (personally I doubt if) the FM is told “naw” by whichever muppet is in charge of Downing Street Garden Parties that this will have no effect on support for independence and that it will be positive? Do you remember when George Osborne came all the way up to Edinburgh to make clear there would be no currency union? The expectation was that this would blow a big hole in the independence vote which was still about thirty something percent. Instead, it went up. Telling Scots they can’t have something is not a good idea. Wha’s like us, eh?

You know Tom you really do need to raise your eyes and stop imagining the world only happens in London, or even WM. It doesn’t. What will happen down there with regard to independence over the next few years is actually pretty obvious – non, niet, nein, naw. It’s what follows here that is interesting. Do you not want us to think about that? Perhaps not. But we should be and in advance, not at the time.

The Big Mac

As has been well rehearsed in many places, yesterday (18th August) was GERS day, when the undead, sorry Unionists emerge to condemn not just independence but the futility of even seeking independence. Needless to say, and as pointed out elsewhere, the Herald was all over this. There was the usual one-eyed nonsense from Tom Gordon, but also a piece by the former Adam Smith Professor of Economics at the University of Glasgow (no less), the interestingly named Ronald MacDonald (now Research Professor).

As is well known, the Prof is a dyed in the wool Unionist who will condemn independence at the very mention of the word. His area of expertise is international finance – check out his cv, he’s done the lot – IMF (no fewer than 14 times), European Central Bank, World Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Royal Bank of Scotland (in the 1990s GU was careful to add), Credit Suisse First Boston, Gartmore and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell etc – he really is neo-liberalism’s man and they have repaid the debt by awarding him buckets of research cash which he transformed into journal articles, books etc, which in turn got him a Chair at Strathclyde before moving to the more sophisticated environment of Gilmourhill. Yes, I went to GU as well (and yes, we did refer to it as Strath Tech, but that’s for another day), and sometimes wonder how quickly Tom Wilson (Adam Smith Prof in my day) and Andy Skinner (subsequent Adam Smith Prof and one of my most influential lecturers) must be birling in their graves that that man occupied “their” Chair. Anyway, enough of character assassination ….

His contribution yesterday is headlined “GERS report: ‘Sheer folly’ of SNP’s independence plans highlighted”, so we can’t complain we couldn’t know what to expect. The thing is that as a piece of Economics writing it just isn’t very good (in the humble opinion of a retired Senior Lecturer at the UWS Business School at Paisley, albeit with a 2:1 in Political Economy and Sociology, as well as a GU PhD).

Let’s leave all the criticisms of GERS to one side, given where we were (according to GERS) last year, and adding Covid to the mix, how surprising is it that a “fiscal deficit figure of 22.4% of GDP” is all that much of a surprise? But MacDonald is all over it, as if it were a surprise. His problem is the absence of any benchmarks – comparators to give an estimate of scale. And the further the piece goes on the more glaring and serious this failure becomes. He bangs on at length about “the fiscal insurance provided as part of the UK” as if the UK somehow uniquely was able to do this. Once he starts on this, it becomes more evident why he doesn’t use benchmarks.

If he wont give us benchmarks, let’s get a few of our own, starting with the “wee country” just across the North Sea – Denmark (just about the same population). The current UK deficit as a proportion of GDP is 13.43% (Countryeconomy.com), while in poor wee Denmark it is ….eh….gulp …. 0.6% (yes that does say zero point 6 of one percent). Aye right, you might think, but the Danes will not have provided the same largesse as the UK did to workers laid off. And you would be right. In some regards, they did it better.

The Danish government paid sick pay (normally funded by employers at a better rate than in the UK), they paid up to 75% of salaries and 90% for hourly paid workers (who of course will normally be less well paid and whom the loss would hit harder); they compensated the self-employed for up to 90% of lost revenue where the revenue decline is estimated to be at least 30% and there are 10 employees or less. Start-ups were compensated for up to 75% of lost salary.

Ah yes, but they were able to use the power of the Euro (stop laughing!). Leaving aside the way the Euro is mocked in the UK, it remains one of the world’s main currencies. Problem is that the Danes don’t use it – they still use their Kroner, though they are signed up to the Currency Stability Pact.

Therefore, Denmark isn’t a benchmark the Prof would use. So what about a few others? Remember the UK has a deficit of 13.43%.

France 9.2%; Czech Republic 6.2%; Australia 3.83%; New Zealand 5.79%

In fact if you go through an international league table of deficits, the only countries to rival the UK’s are Brazil 13.37%, Botswana 13.19%, India 12.26%, Trinidad and Tobago 11.79% and South Africa 12.25%.

But is there nowhere worse than Scotland, which Professor MacDonald takes great joy in telling us is 22.4%? Among those even worse are Kiribati 40.38%, Libya 24%, Timor-Leste 25.62%, Venezuela 22.99%. Now to be down there among those takes a bit of doing. Does the fault lie with us? Despite all the largesse of the UK, Scotland is just irredeemably hopeless? Or do we need to think about who it is that controls the till?

As you might expect, I go for the latter for reasons I will set out in the next part.

However, before we proceed to that, there is another void in the Prof’s argument. He writes “Even with an appropriate currency regime in place, a newly minted independent Scotland without the long history of credibility that the Bank of England and Treasury have, would have to pay a premium on its borrowing over UK rates due, for liquidity and credibility reasons, of up to 1.65%.”

There are two fairly simple points from this. First, is 1.65% not a remarkably precise number – not 1.6, not 1.5. Why not 1.00% to 2.00%? I find that a wee bit suspicious – either that or I want to know his lottery numbers!

As to the second point, this isn’t something that ever happened to me (my parents had never learned to drive – I was the first with a licence, so the family car was always available), but I expect there are loads of people who when they passed their test and looked to get the family car were told “no, you don’t have enough experience”. Of course, until they get the chance to get out on the road they will never acquire that experience, and that is the problem with MacDonald’s point about credibility. He might be right that the markets will look hard at a new Scottish currency, but that is not to say – just as most kids don’t wrap the family car round the first lamppost (though the fact some do is a warning) – that the markets will not settle down, perhaps fairly quickly once they realise Scotland is facing up to its problems (not well described by GERS btw) in a realistic and effective way.

Of course until we are independent this uncertainty will always exist, and it is being used by Unionists like MacDonald in the same way as the bogey man behind the settee.

In conclusion, let’s be clear that MacDonald is a senior and leading economist. However, he is also stridently against independence. It is hard to see how he keeps these things apart – ie using his well-developed economics skills against independence for essentially reasons of personal opinion. I think his Herald article sums this up pretty well.

 

Some thoughts that occur from bringing together a couple of other thoughts. Part 1

Some thoughts that occur from bringing together a couple of other thoughts.

According to Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph (5th March) Johnson and team are gearing up for an early(ish) election – May 2023 to be specific, so not that early but before his term hits the normal five years at the end of 2024.

Nelson’s evidence for this is twofold. First there is the significant, continuing and until recently expanding lead the Tories have over Labour in the polls, suggesting the same sort of majority or even more.

Secondly there is Rishi Sunak’s budget, which, according to Nelson, could be summarised as “spend now, pay nothing until 2023”. Nelson suggests that until 2023 what people will experience is “an economic boom” (or at least the economy climbing back to where it was in March 2020) “and retail therapy” as the great British public spend all that money burning a hole in their pockets from holidays not taken, and that you can only spend so much downloading videos and on Uber Eats. Sunak’s hope is that if we really go at it (and the economy is forecast to grow by 7.3% this year), consumer spending increases so much (and along with it government revenue) that large tax rises wont be necessary. But if they are, then they are postponed till after May 2023.

Indeed, Nelson also suggests that if things don’t go quite to plan – we don’t spend enough, the economy doesn’t bounce back as hoped – then it might be that they cannot afford to hold the election as late as May 2023 (so perhaps the second half of next year?).

Secondly, and also in the Telegraph but in June, Michael Gove is quoted as claiming that Johnson will not permit a second Scottish referendum before the next UK election (in 22 or 23 if Nelson is correct). Why not? Well, the obvious reason, which surprisingly goes unmentioned in Gove’s analysis, is that with support in Scotland pretty much split down the middle, but having been as high as 58%, there is a pretty good chance they would lose. Does Boris want to go down in History as the man who not only took the UK out of Europe, but also was PM when the UK was lost (rather like Lord North and the US)? I wouldn’t have thought so either.

Linked to this are the frequent stories that Boris isn’t all that enamoured of being Prime Minister. It doesn’t pay enough (salary £161,866), he feels and demands too much of his attention, so have an election in May 2023, winning the same sort of majority (or more) and resign a few months later to spend more time with his young (and no doubt expanding) family (and make the sort of money writing for such as the Telegraph that he became used to).

So how do they get there? Professor Curtice has ventured the opinion that “not until Covid is over” is a reason for refusing a referendum that will “wash away” as the pandemic subsides. However, I am afraid the learned Prof seems to fail to appreciate that the end of the pandemic is not only a medical, or public health, judgement but an economic one as well. If we adopt an economic perspective the “end of the pandemic” could be a very long time in coming – certainly longer than with a medical judgement. Consider for instance that in the sense of paying off all the debts from WW2, that didn’t end till we paid the last of our monetary debts to the US, sometime when Gordon Brown was Chancellor.

Moreover, what do the Tories have to lose in Scotland? Douglas Ross? Alister Jack? David Mundell and a couple of others? It’s hardly a huge investment, is it? And of course, as I have little doubt that creating Great Britain and relegating the partner nations to regional status is a serious project for the Johnson gang, that the hope must be as we Scots learn to be British again, and to even love the Union flag, that support for independence will diminish and with it support for another referendum.

But what about that election whenever it is? From the noises coming from the Labour Party there is zero chance of them going to the country with another Scottish referendum as part of their manifesto. There is some pressure to reconsider the nature of the Union – Mark Drakeford is very strong on this, suggesting something more like a Confederation, though that may be an understandable reaction to having to work with Johnson and his cronies? Perhaps they will propose a Committee of Experts (or a Royal Commission as they more commonly known) to satisfy some, but kick the ball firmly down the road.

Last week, in an interview with the Daily Record, Starmer was quoted as saying “on the constitution, going into the Scottish election and since the election, we’ve been absolutely clear that the focus right now is on the recovery and on the climate challenge”. So, no deal there.

Moreover, the electoral forecasts for Labour under Starmer are by no means good. However, just to make sure, the Tories propose the old tactic, used to particular effect against Miliband in 2015, of pinning the proposition on him that, in order to get to Downing Street, he will enter into an electoral pact with the SNP, which, no matter the perception of Sturgeon in England, will be a vote loser for Labour. Whether such an arrangement is real, has any basis in fact whatsoever, really doesn’t matter. What matters is what people think.

Therefore, where Labour are concerned, they are not going to be supportive of another referendum, even if they do get to power, which seems unlikely any time soon. It is said that a good electoral outcome would be to half Johnson’s current majority.

So where does this leave us? Well perhaps an election as early as the second half of next year (in not much more than 12 months) or more likely May 2023, which the Tories will very likely win. After this Johnson retires to spend time his family (or something like that!).

It’s a bit early to speculate about a successor – probably Gove, maybe Sunak, or perhaps (may the Lord have mercy on our souls) Patel – but how much does it really matter? If you have the name of a senior Conservative Party politician who would support a second referendum, please send me this. I really cannot imagine any Prime Minister who is going to volunteer to be the man/ woman who was responsible for dismantling the UK.

In that case, where does this leave the Scottish Government/ SNP? Sturgeon has tied her colours to the mast of a referendum agreed with Westminster, as this is “the gold standard”. Great, but what if Westminster says post their General Election, that another mandate at a Scottish election is necessary, which of course won’t happen till 2025. Much will be made then of another failure of the SNP to win a majority on their own, even though the voting system is oriented toward no party ever winning a majority, and even though with Green MSPs and any Alba members elected, it is not an unreasonable expectation that there will be a majority of independence supporting MSPs elected, and even if we have had another four years of being softened up to accept Great Britain.

I actually have some sympathy for Sturgeon’s position. She understands – as too many don’t – that at some point we will have to engage with Westminster, or the international community is going to stand back and let things unwind. There needs to be, at some point, agreement with Westminster and with the international community.

That said, it is clear increasingly that there will be no referendum without it being wrested from the hands of Westminster. Certainly, one thing that should be done is to campaign for the proposition that Scotland can be and should be independent, in order to increase support through the 50s and up toward 60%. In fact this should have been happening since 20154, even if, as it has, it will attract the “get back to the day job” whine. One way to address this, as well as engaging closely with the wider Yes movement, is to put some real heft behind Mike Russell and his people (he does have people?) in the SNP. In other words to separate government from campaigning for independence – or does that not appeal to the control freaks in the party?

However, I doubt if this alone will be enough. As above the Tories have so little invested in Scotland that if they lose a few MPs, they could well gain more in England. For them, it really doesn’t matter. They have so little to lose.

This folks, is where you and I come in. If the proposition that another referendum is not just for the asking but will have to be forced from Westminster, then it is hard to see how this could be done by the political class acting alone – it will involve that part of the Scottish community which supports independence.

Some thoughts that occur from bringing together a couple of other thoughts. Part 2

If we abjure violence, then there is a creative issue of what can be done by the wider community. Much of course, is already being done – blogging, various Yes organizations already exist. But do these two things not themselves point to weaknesses? How much of the former involves independence supporters talking to each other (and sometimes falling out)? With regard to the latter is a plethora of organizations a sign of strength of a sign of dispute and division?

What can be done about them? First, blogging is an essential and valuable quality of the independence movement, but the issue is how to get these messages out into the wider community. One opportunity – which the Unionist side has been aware of for some time – is letter writing – the Green Ink gang as Wings labelled them. Oh yes, we can laugh at them – Mad Jill for instance is always good for that. We can write that they need a new script – I did that in the Herald the other day. But how much influence do they have?

I think we need to appreciate that the status quo remains the default position – people may leave it and some may come back, but it is still default, particularly for the media. As Chomsky points out defending the status quo is often easier than attacking it – for one thing the arguments are usually more familiar and can be presented much more briefly. For instance, such as “how can Scotland afford to be independent”, or “the rest of the UK won’t allow it” are often presented with not a shred of supporting evidence – it’s just obvious, innit?

But arguing for independence is much more difficult. First of all, the Unionists really only have to attack any independence proposition – “it won’t work” – as we already know the UK. However, we not only have to defend our proposition – “Scotland, an independent country” (but can it be?) – but also criticise the UK because what we suggest has to be “better” in some aspect.

Then there is the media. As John Robertson has pointed out till he must be blue in the face, Reporting Scotland is a serious problem because of its reporting of, particularly the Scottish Government. Then we consider the newspapers. Of all the papers sold and read throughout Scotland I can only think of one – The National – that adopts a regularly positive view of independence.

What I am trying to get at here is that the occasional letter is not going to achieve much – it’s too indiscriminate and lacks much in the way of coherence (other than supporting independence). What is needed is a more strategic and (dare I say it) planned campaign to the media. For instance, not just responding to the recycled crap being put out by the other side, but an approach which is proactive – i.e. not just responding to Mad Jill, or Peter Russell, or Alan Sutherland, but developing a positive view of what an independent Scotland could be. Let’s see them on the back foot, reacting to what we write.

To be honest I have very little idea how something like this would work, other than it is going to require a large number of people. One thing I have learned from interacting with the Herald Letters Page, is that its editor Drew Allan likes to get a wide range of people involved in discussing any topic – so let’s give him that!

The mechanism, I am not going to lie, is very unclear, beyond that social media is probably our friend. But I have a whole load of questions whirling in my head – is it hierarchical (I certainly don’t think so, but can we make it coherent if not)? How does it work out a position on a widely defined issue? Discussion? But what if someone dissents from it and wants to say so? Can we afford folk who want to “do their own thing”? Or is independence just too important for this?

Beyond that of course there is extra-parliamentary activity. Much of this has been undermined by the pandemic, but I struggle to see how demonstrations by such as AUOB can be a “bad thing” – it brings the movement together and confirms the independence movement is not just a small bunch of cranks.

There are loads of things wrong with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug (though please spend five minutes of your time watching it), but Boris Johnson is the best asset the independence movement has right now (closely followed I suspect by Gove) and we have to exploit this ruthlessly. How many people are “mad as hell” with Boris and his policies? Remembering Chomsky’s view of presenting a critical view, we must normalise criticism of the UK as an inappropriate (or just wrong) source of our government.

Perhaps, going even further, there will be a need for peaceful and non-violent civil disobedience. At one level this need by no more than demonstrating – or instance sitting down in the road. At another level the aim would be to make Scotland ungovernable (or less governable) – for instance mass non-payment of TV licences (my experience of TV Licencing is that they are pretty good at chasing down the occasional miscreant – but a LARGE part of Scotland?). Tax is probably beyond our reach – most of us have tax deducted before we lay our hands on it. Perhaps this is the area where originality will be most valuable.

But the take-home point is that the movement needs to be less diffident about this – “oh no, we cannot have illegality” – we don’t – we have a means to an end. Let’s stop apologising for ourselves, particularly as anything we might do pales into insignificance compared to corruption going on down at Westminster.

But please, please can we have a debate about this? If my view that there is unlikely to be a referendum until after May 23 is right then should we not talk about how to use this time to best effect?